Introduction
Environmental racism can be defined as the intentional siting
of hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators, and polluting
industries in communities inhabited mainly by African-American,
Hispanics, Native Americans, Asians, migrant farm workers, and
the working poor. Minorities are particularly vulnerable because
they are perceived as weak and passive citizens who will not fight
back against the poisoning of their neighborhoods in fear that
it may jeopardize jobs and economic survival.
The landmark study, Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States
(Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ 1987),
described the extent of environmental racism and the consequences
for those who are victims of polluted environments. The study
revealed that:

Race was the most significant variable associated with the location
of hazardous waste sites.

The greatest number of commercial hazardous facilities were located
in communities with the highest composition of racial and ethnic
minorities.

The average minority population in communities with one commercial
hazardous waste facility was twice the average minority percentage
in communities without such facilities.

Although socioeconomic status was also an important variable in
the location of these sites, race was the most significant even
after controlling for urban and regional differences.

The report indicated that three out of every five Black and Hispanic
Americans lived in communities with one or more toxic waste sites.
Over 15 million African-American, over 8 million Hispanics, and
about 50 percent of Asian/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans
are living in communities with one or more abandoned or uncontrolled
toxic waste sites.

Bullard (1993) points out that "many of the at-risk communities
are victims of land-use decisionmaking that mirrors the power
arrangements of the dominant society. Historically, exclusionary
zoning has been a subtle form of using government authority and
power to foster and perpetuate discriminatory practices."

A study by the Environmental Protection Agency concluded that
socioeconomic conditions and race are the major factors determining
environmental discrimination. Communities inhabited by poor whites
are also vulnerable to toxic threats. In its two-volume report,
Environmental Equity (1992), the Environmental Protection Agency
alluded to the difficulties of assessing the impact of environmental
hazards on low income and minority communities. While admitting
that those communities suffer a disproportionate share of the
burden, there appears to be a general lack of data on the health
effects of pollutants in those communities. The report asserts
that environmental and health data are not routinely collected
and analyzed by categories of income and race. Critics maintain
that the information is available but the EPA considers it a public
relations issue, not a civil rights issue, and, therefore, does
not take the claims seriously enough to gather the necessary data
by income and race. (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 1992;
Satchell 1992; Mohai and Bryant 1992.)

Some real life examples of hazards
facing minority communities
in the United States:

The largest hazardous waste landfill in the United States is located
in Emelle, Alabama, a poor, predominantly African-American community.
It receives toxic materials from forty-five states and several
foreign countries.

Over 300,000 Hispanic farm workers and their families, including
a large percentage of women of child-bearing age, are seriously
affected by pesticide-related illnesses.

An industrial toxic waste site is located in a predominantly Hispanic
neighborhood on the South Side of Tucson, Arizona. The air and
water are polluted with toxic chemicals which have caused a high
rate of cancer, birth defects, genetic mutations, and other illnesses
among the inhabitants of the area. The community is tainted with
twenty times the acceptable levels of trichloroethylene.

Waste disposal companies have been attempting to convince Native
Americans to permit dumping on the reservations under the guise
of improving the economic conditions. High rates of lung cancer
and poisoned land have occurred on Navajo reservations as a result
of uranium mining.

The South Side of Chicago, which is predominantly African-American
and Hispanic, has the greatest concentration of hazardous waste
sites in the nation.

Radiation exposure is a major health problem in the Marshall Islands,
Bikini, and other Pacific Islands which have been used as test
sites for nuclear and atomic weapons.

The portion of minorities living in communities with existing
incinerators is 89 percent higher than the national average.

Pharmaceutical companies, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants
are responsible for making Puerto Rico one of the world's most
heavily polluted places.

Six of the eight municipal incinerators and five of the municipal
landfills in Houston, Texas, are located in predominantly African
American neighborhoods.

Communities where incinerators are proposed have minority populations
60 percent higher than the national average and property values
35 percent lower than the national average.

In communities with existing incinerators, the average income
is 15 percent less than the national average and property values
are 38 percent lower than the national average. (Commission on
Racial Justice, United Church of Christ 1987; Lee 1990; De La
Pena 1991; Satchell 1992; Lee 1993.)

Studies suggest clear relationships
between a high concentration
of minority populations, or low average incomes, with an unhealthy
environment. Poor people do not have the economic means to leave
their neighborhoods for resettlement elsewhere. Housing discrimination
often makes it difficult to find alternative dwellings at affordable
rates. Industries that pollute are attracted to poor neighborhoods
because land values, incomes, and other costs of doing business
are lower. The industries are drawn to poor neighborhoods where
political power and community resources to fight back are weak
or lacking. Higher income areas are usually more successful in
preventing or controlling the entry of polluting industries to
their communities. (Mohai and Bryant 1992.)
The effects of pollution and environmental hazards on people of
color, the poor, and the working class have been overlooked by
environmental policy makers because it was perceived that those
communities were politically powerless and would not protest the
siting of such facilities. African Americans, for example, were
seen as "less informed, less aware and less concerned with
environmental issues than whites" (Taylor 1989). However,
recent studies indicate that poverty and lack of empowerment is
a better indicator of environmental racism than race itself.
These studies, which measured the broad environmental perspectives
of African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans, showed
that, when considered broadly, without specific emphasis on a
particular environmental aspect, concern among racial minorities
and the poor is as strong and active as in the larger population.
Structural barriers and lack of adequate resources within the
communities account for the low level of activism by minority
groups. When citizens in the contaminated communities are adequately
informed about the hazards, their level of awareness and opposition
to the toxic facilities results in active protest. (Ostheimer
and Ritt 1976, Noe and Snow 1989, Caron 1989, Booth and Jacobs
1990, Mohai 1990.)
The mainstream environmental movement has been criticized for
its glaring lack of minority representation. Critics claim that
these organizations fail to recruit minority memberships and have
not addressed the daily environmental hazards in minority communities.
With the possible exception of organizations like Natural Resources
Defense Council, Greenpeace, and Earth Island Institute, mainstream
environmental organizations appear to be more interested in wilderness
and wildlife preservation, resource conservation, and population
control than in human environmental hazards. (Baugh 1990, Adams
1992.)
One of the first steps toward addressing the problem of environmental
racism was the establishment of the Conference on Race and the
Incidence of Environmental Hazards held at the University of Michigan
in January 1990. This conference gave national visibility to the
public debate on environmental racism and served as a catalyst
for residents of polluted communities to organize. This is not
a situation that lends itself to overnight solutions or simple
policy formulations. As the papers at the conference illustrated,
there are historical, economic, political, and ethical ramifications
of environmental racism which require bold action and equitable
environmental decisionmaking. Activists in communities around
the country are using the strategies of the civil rights and antiwar
movements of the 1960s and 1970s for the environmental struggles
of the 1990s. The movement's goal is to remedy past injustices
and promote fairness in local, national, and international environmental
decisionmaking (Bryant and Mohai 1992a, 1992b; Grossman 1992;
Taylor 1992).
Citizens who are tired of being subjected to the dangers of pollution
in their communities have been confronting the power structures
through organized protest, legal actions, marches, civil disobedience,
and other activities. Community newsletters, pamphlets, magazines,
classes, lectures, and videocassettes have made it possible to
recruit large numbers of people. In addition, minorities are using
the power of the ballot and economic pressures to make their stands
(Kuzmiak 1991). Minority voter blocs are forming around the country
to exercise clout in many areas where their opinions are not usually
sought. They have the strength in numbers and the activist skills
to form effective coalitions with environmental organizations
to promote effective change. In addition, the Black Congressional
Caucus has a strong record of solid support for environmental
issues. Mainstream organizations would benefit from the skills
and savvy of the grassroots organizations by forming coalitions
to press for establishment of desirable environmental agendas
(Jordan and Snow 1992).
Carol Merchant (1992) sees this revitalized protest activity as
an attempt to solve the human health and welfare problems which
are rooted in the "malign side-effects of industrial capitalist
development." The movement is attempting to resolve the contradictions
between production of goods and reproduction of their daily lives
in healthy neighborhoods with an acceptable standard of living
through regulation of aspects of production or economic restructuring.
Snow (1992) appeals to the environmental nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) to recruit minorities into their ranks:

Efforts must be made to expand the national constituency for conservation
through deliberate recruitment of leaders from minority and low
income communities and through focused efforts to address environmental
issues of particular concern to these communities. . . . This
effort could be initiated through the development of a new conservation
fellowship program designed to groom minority and low income students
for positions of professional leadership among conservation NGOs.
But the effort must go farther and must include the deliberate
engagement of environmental issues of greatest concern to nonwhite
citizens, coupled with recruitment of leaders from the communities
that have traditionally been omitted from the conservation constituency.

The Environmental Equity Workgroup of
EPA offered several recommendations
that would enable the Agency to deal more equitably with minorities
and the poor in environmental decisionmaking. A summary of the
recommendations follows (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
1992):

Increase the priority given to issues of environmental equity.

Establish and maintain an effective database for assessing risks
on the basis of income and race.

Create measures to reduce high concentrations of risk among specific
population groups.

When making major decisions or promoting Agency initiatives, assess
and consider the distribution of projected risk.

Integrate equity into EPA programs by addressing high risk communities
in its permit, grant, monitoring, and enforcement procedures.

Increase efforts to communicate with racial minority and low income
communities and involve them in environmental policymaking.

Establish mechanisms to include equity considerations in long
term planning and agency operations.

This bibliography consists of selected
resources describing the
empowerment of racial minorities and the poor in their struggles
for environmental justice. The items chosen for inclusion represent
the variety of approaches being used by grassroots environmental
groups to make their views known to those who make decisions that
affect their lives. It is intended to offer readers an overview
of the activities and orientations of those who are fighting environmental
racism and to demonstrate the importance of citizen action in
issues of public health and welfare. For citations to additional
resources on environmental racism, see the bibliography by Link
(1993).

Commission for Racial Justice. United Church of Christ. 1987.
Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States: A National Report
on the Racial and Socio-Economic Characteristics of Communities
with Hazardous Waste Sites. New York: Public Data Access. xiii-xvi.

This review essay examines the reasons
why Blacks have generally
been absent from the environmental movement and the activism that
is now emerging in the communities where they live. Baugh cites
studies indicating that the primary activism against environmental
racism emerges from local groups not from mainstream environmental
organizations. Her examples include protests, demonstrations,
lobbying, and lawsuits against companies in West Dallas, Texas;
Institute, West Virginia; Alson, Louisiana; Emelle, Alabama; and
Northwood Manor, West Virginia.

In the seventy-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans
known as "Cancer Alley" there are ninety-three oil refineries
and chemical plants emitting toxins into the air and water. A
nine and a half square mile stretch of the Mississippi River below
Baton Rouge includes the predominantly Black small towns of Geismar,
St. Gabriel, Reveilletown, and Alsen. The area has eighteen processing
plants that convert chemicals into raw materials. These plants
release 196 million pounds of pollutants into the air and water
each year. Residents of the area suffer from miscarriages, cancer,
massive tumors and other pollution related illnesses. Grassroots
multiracial organizations have sprung up to initiate lawsuits
and fight the polluters. Activists Amos Favorite and Helen Robinson
carry out information campaigns to educate the residents about
the environmental hazards wrought by the chemical companies. The
Louisiana Environmental Action Network (LEAN) helps in this effort
and has offered assistance in actions against the companies. LEAN
was instrumental in getting the Air Toxic and Solid Waste Bills
through the state legislature. The movement's leaders have lobbied
legislators and are continuing legal fights against the intransigence
of the chemical companies. Citizens of the Cancer Alley communities
are also seeking compensation through lawsuits. In Reveilletown,
for instance, the community filed suit against Georgia- Gulf after
traces of vinyl chloride were found in the blood of local children.

Dumping in Dixie is an in-depth study of environmental racism
in black communities in the South. Bullard explores the barriers
to environmental and social justice experienced by blacks and
the factors that contribute to the conflicts, disparities, and
the resultant growing militancy. He provides case studies of strategies
used by grassroots groups who wanted to take back their neighborhoods
in Houston's Northwood Manor neighborhood; West Dallas, Texas;
Institute, West Virginia; Alsen, Louisiana; and Emelle- Sumter
County, Alabama.

In these predominantly Black communities, grass roots organizing
was carried out to protest against landfills, incinerators, toxic
waste, chemical industries, salvage yards, and garbage dumps.
Strategies included demonstrations, public hearings, lawsuits,
the election of supporters to state and local offices, meetings
with company representatives, and other approaches designed to
bring public awareness and accountability. Bullard offers action
strategies and recommendations for greater mobilization and consensus
building for the ensuing environmental equity struggles of the
1990s.

Atgeld Gardens, a housing project on the Southeast Side of Chicago
with 10,000 predominantly African-American residents, is surrounded
by pollution. Chemical plants, a paint factory, two steel mills,
and lagoons filled with contaminants emit 30,000 tons of toxic
substances into the air each year. Environmentally caused diseases
such as cancer, brain tumors, respiratory problems, birth deformities,
blindness, and death are rampant. Grossman locates Atgeld Gardens
in a historical continuum of incidents of environmental racism
in the United States since the 1920s.

Grassroots citizens' groups have been established in Atgeld Gardens
and other communities to fight pollution and protect the health
and safety of the inhabitants. Door-to- door organizing and voter
registration efforts have resulted in large numbers of people
participating in the protests. Active organizations like the Gulf
Coast Tenants Association in New Orleans; West Harlem Environmental
Action in New York; Center for Environment, Commerce, and Energy
in Atlanta; Native Americans for a Clean Environment in northeast
Oklahoma; Southwest Organizing Project in Albuquerque; Asian American
Woman Advocates in Oakland, California; and Blacks Against Nukes
in Washington, D.C., are using education campaigns in their communities
and strategies of the civil rights movement to confront those
who make the environmental decisions. Greenpeace, Earth Island
Institute, and the National Toxic Campaign have assisted in some
of the neighborhood actions.

Hispanics

Bennet, James. "Hispanic voters and the Politics of Sludge."
New York Times, 5 March 1993, B1.

Hispanic voters in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, New York,
pressed the mayor and other city officials to withdraw plans for
a sludge composting plant in their neighborhood. The plant was
designed to transform sludge into fertilizer and other products.
Several citizen groups and individuals, including the Brooklyn
Borough president and a Hispanic appointee to the City Planning
Commission, were instrumental in persuading the mayor to block
the plan. Hispanic voters reminded city officials that they accounted
for 13 percent of ballots cast in the 1989 mayoral campaign and
those votes were vital for the mayor's narrow victory. Asian Americans
who live in the area put pressure on an Asian member of the Planning
Commission to oppose the plan because it was a choice made on
the basis of race and class.

The dumping of wastes on Indian reservations has been determined
in the past by state and federal regulations which did not take
into account the wishes of the tribes. In the late 1980s Congress
gave Native Americans the authority to adopt their own standards
and regulations and to make contracts with the EPA controlling
waste dumping on Indian lands. Many tribes around the country
are now involved in controlling environmental decisions on the
reservations. Tribes such as the Umatilla in Oregon, the Sioux
in South Dakota, the Kaibab-Paiute in Arizona, the Kaw in Oklahoma,
and the Choctaw in Mississippi have rejected proposals to place
solid and hazardous waste landfills on the reservations. Their
ability to regulate the use of reservation lands has enabled them
to work with county planning boards and state and federal agencies
to influence environmental decisions which benefit the tribes.

The Navajo Reservation, which spans the New Mexico- Arizona border,
was polluted in 1979 when an accident at the United Nuclear Corporation's
Church Rock Mill near Gallup, New Mexico released 94 million gallons
of radioactive waste into the Puerco River. The river winds through
the reservation and the communities of Manuelito and Lupton. Since
the river is still polluted, the 10,000 Navajos who live along
the Puerco River must use shallow wells and springs to draw water
for their livestock and personal needs. The spill, which was not
publicized in the press and was not taken seriously by the tribe
due to lack of information about its dangers, caused a dramatic
rise in animal deformities and cancer-related deaths in the communities
along the river.

The Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque initiated
a program in 1986 called the Puerco River Education Project (PREP)
to enable affected communities to develop their own water resources
with sovereign authority over all Indian waters. The Southwest
Organizing Project (SWOP) has helped local activists develop strategies
for empowerment. SWOP also assisted Hispanics in northwest Albuquerque
in protests against a particle board company which ultimately
invested US$2 million to reduce air and noise contaminants. Through
voter registration and candidate accountability forums, SWOP has
made it possible for local grassroots groups to confront the polluters
and demand compliance with environmental laws.

Native Americans around the country are organizing to resist the
siting of hazardous waste sites on reservations. Over 42 of the
360 tribes in the United States have been approached by waste
disposal companies and 30 have rejected the proposals.

The Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota is organizing resistance
to the building of a 5,700 acre landfill underneath the reservation
and surrounding lands. The Kaw Tribe in northern Oklahoma rejected
a $100 million hazardous waste disposal plant on a 5,000-acre
tract owned by five tribes, to have included a combined landfill,
tire recycling facility, and toxic waste injection well. A Native
American activist in the area founded the Campaign for Sovereignty
to preserve the independence and autonomy of the tribes and to
regulate the decision making process. The Oglala Lakota Sioux
in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, refused to allow a garbage sludge
and incinerator ash dump on the reservation. The Los Coyotes Reservation
in the mountains east of San Diego revoked permission for the
building of a landfill. The Paiutes in Kaibab, Arizona, rejected
plans to build an incinerator with a capacity to burn up to 100,000
tons of hazardous waste. The Choctaw Tribal Council in Choctaw,
Mississippi, rejected a hazardous waste site after a joint protest
of Native Americans and non-Indians.

A 1990 conference on the environmental threat to tribal lands
was held in South Dakota. The conference offered workshops on
grassroots organizing and methods of dealing with waste and developing
environmentally sound economic alternatives. The Toxics on Indian
Land Network in Ontario, Canada, is organizing activists from
the United States and Canada to focus on issues of environmental
justice for Native Americans.

Mexican farmworkers in Kettleman City, California, organized a
multi-ethnic coalition, El Pueblo Para El Aire y Agua Limpio (People
for Clean Air and Water), to oppose the building of a toxic waste
incinerator in the area. The company, Chem Waste, had built a
toxic landfill in Kettleman City in 1979 which has contaminated
the area with odors and illnesses from the more than 200,000 tons
of poisons dumped at the site each year. Latino farm managers,
migrant farmworkers, and Anglo residents who operate large farms
in the area lobbied, marched, and gained national attention.

California Rural Legal Assistance filed a lawsuit against Chem
Waste claiming that environmental racism played a role in their
decision to choose Kettleman City. County supervisors were charged
with running discriminatory public participation proceedings by
holding public hearings thirty five miles from Kettleman City
so that farmworkers would not be able to attend. Meetings were
conducted in English and critical documents were not translated
to Spanish. Many farmworkers who attended could not understand
the proceedings. Civil rights organizations, environmental activists,
politicians, and organizations like Greenpeace and the Sierra
Club joined the protests. After a three year struggle, the state
superior court ruled that Chem Waste failed to provide adequate
information regarding the incinerator's environmental impact and
was ordered to prepare and translate a Spanish-language version
of the impact report. Bids by the company were rejected twice
in 1992 and construction is years behind schedule.

Migrant farmworkers in the fruit and vegetable growing areas of
the San Joaquin Valley of California suffer from pesticide related
illnesses due to the uncontrolled use of dangerous pesticides.
The predominantly Hispanic farmworkers suffer from cancer, birth
defects, headaches, dizziness, skin rashes, cardiac arrest, and
death from pesticides. Pesticide regulations are not enforced
and enforcement agencies ignore the farmworkers' complaints. Air
and water in the nearby town of McFarland is seriously polluted
from the pesticide drift which enters the town.

The late Cesar Chavez, president of the United Farm Workers (UFW),
led protests in the state capital and marches in the San Joaquin
Valley to protest the unregulated use of pesticides on produce
grown in the area. UFW is calling for a ban on the most dangerous
pesticides and enforcement of pesticide use regulations. Organizing
efforts are underway by the UFW to unite farmworkers in a common
cause for labor contracts and environmental justice.

Over 300,000 farmworkers suffer from the effects of pesticide-related
illnesses each year. Children are also exposed to pesticide poisoning
because they accompany their parents to the fields. Migrant labor
camps are contaminated by pesticide drift from adjacent fields
and lack appropriate running water and washing facilities.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in Michigan and Ohio
has achieved a variety of gains against Campbell Soup and Heinz
after years of strikes and boycotts. Negotiations with these companies
resulted in a more equitable wage system, compliance with basic
field sanitation requirements such as running water and toilets,
and a requirement that farmworkers be notified prior to any pesticide
spraying. These agreements have allowed farmers and farmworkers
to interact as parties with common interests.

A book of essays addressing all aspects of environmental racism
and the victimization of people of color in urban and rural areas.
The contributing authors are academicians and activists who are
prominent in the movement for environmental justice. Toxic wastes,
siting of waste facilities, urban industrial pollution, childhood
lead poisoning, farmworkers and pesticides, land rights, sustainable
development, global threats due to export of toxic and other issues
affecting African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Pacific Islanders,
and Native Americans are covered by the contributing authors.

The essays present case studies and strategies used by the emerging
grassroots environmental movement to empower people of color to
confront government agencies, industries, nongovernmental organizations,
and international organizations on behalf of serious change, social
justice, and mutual respect in environmental decision making.
Demonstrations, legal actions, political action, union organizing,
clearinghouses and public education, public forums, and demands
for accountability from elected officials are among the strategies
used.

This detailed discussion of environmental racism examines the
factors that influence siting of toxic waste sites. Examples are
provided of siting decisions, regulations, and consequences for
various communities in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Wisconsin,
Louisiana, Texas, and several Indian reservations. Methods of
protest by grassroots organizations representing African Americans,
Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans are described. Strategies
for opposing the sites included protests, demonstrations, picketing,
political pressure, and litigation.

The authors conclude that "government officials and agencies
have exercised their power to exploit the less politically influential,
the less informed and the poorer members of society. Rather than
receiving protection from a democratic system designed to protect
the minority voice, the ethnic and racial minority communities
became a convenient scapegoat for difficult political decisions."
As public awareness grows, minority opposition to environmental
racism will continue until the neighborhoods in which they live
are no longer treated as safe places for polluters.

Dowie analyzes the growth of grassroots community organizations
that are emerging around the country to demand participation in
environmental decision making. He points out that mainstream environmental
organizations have failed to attract minorities and the poor.
Grassroots activists perceive these organizations as arrogant
and elitist, more concerned with wilderness, wildlife, and natural
resource conservation than with the environmental damage to low
income communities around the country.

The grassroots environmental movement involves women, the poor,
and people of color confronting environmental hazards in their
neighborhoods. Examples include a toxic waste dump in rural Arkansas,
an ocean incinerator off the Texas coast, a pesticide sprayer
in the Central Valley of California, a refinery in New Jersey,
and shipments of nuclear waste through small towns in Wyoming.
Affected groups have been successful in bringing changes to the
environmental agenda through demonstrations, consumer boycotts,
shareholder suits, and nonviolent protests.

Dowie urges the American environmental movement to develop into
"a broad-based, multi-ethnic movement that takes a long term
global view, challenges prevailing economic assumptions, promotes
environmental protection as an extension of human rights, and
engages in direct action when necessary." If it pursues this
goal, the movement can forge a new society.

Godsil examines equity issues that arise in the placement of commercial
hazardous waste facilities. Since affluent communities oppose
hazardous waste facilities in their neighborhoods, developers
often place these facilities in predominantly poor and minority
communities. Consequently, minorities are unfairly bearing an
excessive burden of environmental hazards while the benefits of
production that result in hazardous wastes are dispersed among
the larger society. The nature and causes of the disproportionate
burden of hazardous waste are described.

Godsil presents current state and federal hazardous waste legislation
and its failure to address issues of environmental racism. She
recommends that constitutional remedies such as the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment be invoked to challenge environmental
disparities and proposes federal legislation to ameliorate the
burden of waste siting in minority communities. The proposed act
would allow minority communities to argue that there is a disparate
impact. It would permit definition of the population that would
be physically or financially harmed by the sites. Plaintiffs would
have to prove that there is a disparate impact on the minority
community relative to the affluent community. Legislation at the
state level should permit the relevant state agency to take the
race and socioeconomic status of a community into account when
considering the potential hazards of such sites.

Godsil provides examples of court cases in which race and class
played a role in decisions concerning environmental equity.

A new legal specialty called Environmental Poverty Law helps minorities
and the poor fight their environmental battles in the courts.
The Environmental Poverty Law working group was formed to serve
as a clearinghouse for poverty lawyers who handle environmental
cases. Legal strategies pursued by this "new breed"
of lawyers are designed to get government agencies to release
data, forcing municipalities to hold public hearings on projects
that may pose health hazards, and filing lawsuits against companies
and government agencies who use racial or ethnic bias in pollution
projects.

Attorneys involved in environmental poverty law have been successful
in delaying construction of incinerators, cleaning up abandoned
factories and warehouses, gaining access to information on hazardous
projects and other issues.

A detailed report on the toxic air and water in Los Angeles and
its detrimental effects on the health and well being of the citizens
of the city.

Industries in the Los Angeles area emit great amounts of nitrogen
oxides, organic gases, and dangerous toxins into the air, water,
and workplaces. Working class people, the poor, and people of
color are most vulnerable because the polluting industries are
located mainly in their neighborhoods. However, the toxins are
present throughout Los Angeles and affect all citizens.

Failure of the regulatory agencies to control the pollution and
enforce the law made it necessary for the citizens of Los Angeles
to act. A multi-ethnic coalition of workers, minorities, labor
unions, and environmental groups formed an organization called
Labor/Community Watchdog to confront the polluters and demand
a clean up of L.A.'s air. Public education campaigns, lawsuits,
protest rallies, and other active strategies will be used to monitor
and pressure the existing regulatory agencies and provide a watchdog
strategy to confront corporate polluters. Using strategies of
the civil rights movement and labor struggles, Watchdog plans
to fight in the courts, legislatures, workplaces, the media, and
the marketplace. Face-to-face negotiations with executives of
polluting companies and concrete demands will be part of the strategy.
This coalition comprises workers, high school and college students,
women, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, white working
people, farmworkers, and inner-city residents who are victims
of air pollution, waste incineration, and groundwater contamination.

Labor/Community Watchdog has been instrumental in gaining dialogue
with polluters and forcing regulatory agencies to monitor the
industries. Watchdog is demanding that corporations which profit
from pollution be required to pay for clean up. Many more successful
strategies are being planned as the organization grows.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on grounds
of race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving
federal funds. Perkins points out that local and state environmental
and health programs and activities often receive federal funds
and must abide by Article VI. She recommends using this as a legal
remedy when the siting of toxic waste sites will have a discriminatory
effect on minority groups. Other remedies include public hearings
when companies apply for permits and compliance with state and
federal environmental impact provisions. Citizens should attend
those hearings and demand that state and federal authorities enforce
environmental laws.

Lead poisoning can be attributed to paint, gasoline, solder, food,
soil, water, and air. Parents in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana,
formed an organization called Parents and Teachers Organized to
Prevent Lead Poisoning. In New York, the Coalition to End Lead
Poisoning sued the city for protection from lead based paint in
public housing. People United for a Better Oakland (PUEBLO),
a community based group in Oakland, California, filed a class
action lawsuit to force the state to comply with state statutes
and Health Care Enforcement Administration guidelines to require
testing children for lead levels in the blood. Citizens can also
sue for enforcement of the Lead Contamination Control Act of 1988
to eliminate lead contaminated drinking water in public and private
schools and day care centers. For protection from lead poisoning
in paint, citizens should demand enforcement of the Lead Based
Paint Poisoning Prevention Act of 1971.

Latino and African American students in the Williamsburg section
of Brooklyn, New York, are fighting environmental racism in their
neighborhood. Eight activists, ranging in age from sixteen to
twenty, have lectured, marched, and organized rallies against
the Radiac Research Corporation, which stores and transports toxic
waste and low-level radioactive and flammable materials. They
object to its location next to a public school playground.

A study by Hunter College found twenty-eight facilities in the
Williamsburg-Greenpoint area which stored large amounts of toxic
waste. Eleven of those sites contained substances classified as
extremely dangerous by the EPA and exceeding government recommendations.

The Toxic Avengers have started a recycling program in the neighborhood
and workshops for inner city youth around the country. The group
has received public service awards and gained the attention of
state legislators.

Russell describes the activities of MELA, Mothers of East Los
Angeles, a predominantly Hispanic organization established in
1985 by Lucille Roybal-Allard (who was elected a state assemblywoman
in 1987) to fight the construction of an incinerator in a Hispanic
community. A predominantly Black coalition, Concerned Citizens
of Central Los Angeles (CCSLA), which succeeded in stopping a
plan to build a large garbage incinerator in a predominantly Black
neighborhood, joined MELA in its efforts.

Through public hearings, petitions and public information campaigns,
CCSLA and MELA fought successfully to prohibit the building of
incinerators in minority areas. On short notice, MELA could muster
400 volunteers to make announcements at churches, place bilingual
advertisements about hearings and marches in neighborhood newspapers,
and distribute updates and flyers. As public outcries intensified,
CCSLA and MELA gained additional support from Greenpeace, Citizens
for a Better Environment (Oakland, California), National Health
Law Program, Center for Law in the Public Interest, and the Institute
for Local Self Reliance. Additional alliances were formed with
two groups that advocate slow growth, Not Yet New York and the
California Alliance in Defense of Residential Environments.

These protests against incinerators and toxic industries in minority
neighborhoods have forged a powerful coalition that has gained
many important victories through local protests and marches, lawsuits,
attendance at hearings, notification of voters, demonstrations,
and picketing.

Grassroots protests by Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian
groups are battling pollution hazards in their communities using
a variety of strategies.

A report from the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that
racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionate exposure
to dust, soot, carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur, sulfur dioxide,
lead, and emissions from hazardous waste dumps. An environmental
justice movement has developed out of many local protests. These
groups are using the strategies of the civil rights movement to
battle environment racism around the country.

The West Dallas Coalition for Environmental Justice has filed
lawsuits against local, state, and federal agencies to fight for
the cleanup of contaminated soil from a lead smelter that closed
in 1984. Black residents of Wallace, Louisiana, helped to defeat
plans to build a $700 million wood pulp and rayon plant on one
of the remaining nonindustrial stretches of the Mississippi River
between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. With assistance from the
Natural Resources Defense Council, several Harlem groups filed
suit against a sewage treatment plant that produces odors offensive
to the community. The suit contends the site was chosen because
it was perceived as a poor community that lacked the political
clout to oppose the plant.

Grassroots groups have formed alliances with established civil
rights and environmental organizations such as the American Civil
Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and
the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund to support their legal struggles.

Tsao, Naiking. "Ameliorating Environmental Racism: A Citizens'Guide
to Combatting The Discriminatory Siting of Toxic Waste Dumps."
New York University Law Review 67 (2): 366-418, May 1992.

Tsao provides a comprehensive analysis of state and federal legal
options for opposing discriminatory hazardous waste siting procedures
based upon race, class, and resource allocation. He discusses
state and local hazardous waste siting procedures currently in
use; state statutory, common law and constitutional options for
litigants affected by the discriminatory sitings; and the relevance
of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution for issues
of environmental justice.

Tsao finds that states have tended to interpret constitutional
equity provisions more broadly than has the U.S. Supreme Court.
He recommends, therefore, that litigants pursue state law options
first; federal claims should be made only after evaluating the
effectiveness of state law.

The Environmental Congress of Arkansas (ECA), representing sixteen
grassroots environmental organizations, gathered to discuss strategies
to reclaim Arkansas, the third most polluted state in the country.

Examples of some of the successes of local groups include Citizens
Against Polluted Streams, which received court awarded damages
from Tyson Chicken for dumping chicken feces and scraps into local
waterways. Friends United for a Safe Environment successfully
fought against an overstuffed landfill.

ECA led successful protests against an incinerator in Jacksonville,
Arkansas, which was permitted to burn dioxins. The incinerator
was built on a site which was used to dispose of 28,300 barrels
of toxic waste, 140 vats of heavy chemicals and over 100 acres
of contaminated soil which has accumulated at the site since the
1960s. ECA strategies included protests at the state capitol,
media attention, and press releases. Citizen protests and class
action lawsuits caused the company to file for bankruptcy, pay
a fine, shut down the operation in Jacksonville and relocate to
Memphis, Tennessee. (This success was short lived. The EPA and
the Arkansas Department of Pollution Control and Ecology granted
the company a license on 2 January 1992 to burn toxic waste in
the Jacksonville incinerator).

Other protests have been undertaken against a hazardous waste
incinerator in El Dorado which resulted in a $500,000 fine for
noncompliance with the Clean Air Act. Protests in Camden, Arkansas,
resulted in the relocation of a 300 acre landfill. ECA has gained
credibility with the state Attorney General and the Pollution
Control Department, further enhancing the organization's visibility
and empowerment.